Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Everyone's favourite tousle-haired Bad Science Ninja, Dr Ben Goldacre (ahem, Dr - as in medical, rather than Dr* as in Chemical...) has provided the common sense side of the argument - and done it well. Mind you, the arguments for homeopathy are paper thin and could be easily destroyed by a 10 year old (although in this case, it's someone who looks like a ten year old :)

The only real problem with it is that the case for is pretty weak (and has been given a proper fisking here as these two points of view have both appeared before, bizarrely, in The Guardian, the liberal lefty (usually) intelligent scourge of Daily Mail readers). It's a massive bugbear that I will not doubt blawg about at a later stage, that in the interests of 'fairness' we have to hear ALL sides of the argument, with no weighting being given to how sensible or bonkers the argument is.

The opening gambit is a beauty and in many ways negates reading the rest of the article (it's also interesting why someone with a bit of knowledge in the field didn't write the article):

A leading novelist who swears by it. A science expert who thinks it's tosh.

Imagine it wasn't homeopathy. Imagine a full reversal - say, for instance, a heart triple bypass and then you read in the paper a debate about its merits and found

A science expert who swears by it. A leading novelist who thinks it's tosh.

This could get silly. Thankfully, it's mid-day and the Christmas supplies of vino haven't arrived yet, so this particular train of thought has hit the buffers.

Oh, just one then......

Bible suggests young earth:

A creationist swears by it, a leading world class paleontologist thinks it's tosh

Thursday, November 22, 2007

It's a slightly surreal title, I know, but then I've just put another empty bottle of Macallan into the recycling.

I am not a meteorologist. However, I do have an inkling about how some weather systems work...

**parades 'A' in GCSE Geography**

But the little I know leads me to believe that I know more than Jo MacFarlane, or at least more than she's letting on. (I don't even know if Jo is male or female but that, as so often is the case, is irrelevant).

1. Predicting that in Britain there will be storms in Winter is a bit like predicting that the next Pope will be Catholic. It certainly doesn't mean you can claim Randi's Millions if you are correct.

2. If the Met Office say that "[longer term predictions] are not necessarily within the scientific understanding of weather forecasting" I would tend to believe them, rather than Piers Corbyn, whose reasons for making [exciting if vague] predictions are clear either from a profit point of view or from a personal point of view.

Now, whether or not Mrs Storm does arrive at Christmas is not the point, it's whether Mr Corbyn predicted it. Given that we're currently (as in tomorrow, Friday 23rd Nov) supposed to be enjoying "Dangerous storms and tornadoes" (also penned by Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms MacFarlane) I'll happily put him in the file marked "Bluffers".

MET OFFICE:Friday dayMost parts dry, sunny but rather cold, a brisk, chilly northeasterly wind bringing rain, sleet or snow showers to some North Sea coastal areas of England and wet and windy weather arriving in the far northwest of Scotland.

Friday nightWidespread frost. The north, becoming windy, rain spreading southeast, turning to snow for a time over eastern Scotland and hills of northern England. Risk of icy conditions for a time.

Daily Express:...“dangerous storms” to hit by Friday.

Regions could be battered by heavy rain and winds gusting up to 100mph, said forecaster Piers Corbyn at Weather Action.

He also warned that conditions would be perfect for tornado development, especially off the South Coast.

EDIT: January 1st 2008 - Happy New Year. Looks like we managed to escape the tornadoes over Christmas. What a waste of time Piers Corbyn is.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Still, I suppose when you take into account all the people who died in religious wars and people whose lives have been made misery by varying forms of religious-instilled bigotry, it's maybe not such a good thing after all.

Nonetheless, seems like a good time to introduce Jesus & Mo, two random characters based on nobody in particular (either living, dead or a little bit of both). Here is the Wiki blurb, which (let's face it) puts it more succintly and cleverly than I could:

The simply drawn comic features two present day religious prophets, Jesus and Mo. While Jesus is portrayed as the actual Christian prophet, Mo claims to be a body double ... to get around the restriction in Islam of representing the prophet Muhammad pictorially.

Jesus and Mo share an apartment and occasionally venture outside, principally to a public house, The Cock and Bull, where they imbibe Guinness stout and engage in conversation and debate with an atheist female bar attendant known simply as Barmaid.

A fourth character, Moses, another Abrahamic prophet, appears in a few strips. The Hindu god Ganesh made a one-time appearance; both Jesus and Mo mocked his depicted weight and four arms.

The first inkling that something was up was that the DM webpage didn't mention the name of the report, referring to it only as "last week's health report". The thrust of the piece was that publishing a report which pretty much said that everything you eat will affect your cancer risk to some degree will make people switch off listening to the good healthy eating advice and lose the message.

What struck me as odd, is that the Daily Mail for as long as I can remember has been putting all inanimate objects in the known universe into the categories of either causing or curing cancer. With the help of a sturdy ScienceMangle™ they have been one of the most repetitive sources of cancer fear for the worried well. How could we forget those lethal grapefruit or the bowel-busting one-glass-of-wine? I'm certainly glad that I'm not a tall, 14-year-old,left-handed, brunette who is sexually active (from the Daily Mail's perspective, at any rate....)

EDIT: I said 'inanimate objects' above. Apparently, it is also animate objects - bring on the carcinogenic canine.

Mangle.....whirr.....mangle.....whirr.......

Luckily for us all, DM debunks its own stories every once in a while. Now listen up and read carefully. It's time for Spot The Difference or Compare & Contrast or however you like to refer to it. Have your ScienceMangle™ set to "Irony".

FACT: An e-mail made the rounds a couple of years ago falsely linking antiperspirant with an increased risk of breast cancer.

It said anti-perspirant stopped toxins being purged from the body in sweat instead being deposited in the lymph nodes, causing cell mutations.

Cancer Research UK and the American Cancer Society have rubbished the claim, saying it is simply not true. Firstly, sweat does not contain toxins. And there is no proven link between anti-perspirant chemicals and cancer.

Now, of course, everyone knows that mobile phones cause cancer - at least, we're told it does by the DM; eye cancer and brain tumours are your lot, even if you're only on the phone for ten minutes. But, phew, relief and everything's fine because the ScienceMangle™ has been momentarily switched off, so that we can be told

MYTH: Mobile phones give you brain cancer.

FACT: So far, most studies have found no link between mobile phone use and brain cancer. But the jury is still out on just how damaging mobiles are.

Of course they are - the jury consisting of the DM's shareholders and lots of middle class unintelligentsia. These stories will always sell papers to this demographic - all you need is a list of all the objects in the world, access to some medical journals and a good, well-maintained ScienceMangle™.

Keep Libel Laws out of Science

About Me

Who I am is largely irrelevant, and indeed so are most of my thoughts.
Nonetheless, it winds me up that I am supposed to swallow half-truths and untruths relating to scientific claims emanating directly from media sources and indirectly from people who haven't a clue what they're talking about.
Look, you've got me started.
(You can email me at thinkingisdangerousblog AT googlemail DOT com.)